Posteagenesis: The Further Adventures of Joe Shaw through Space and Time

By John Russell Marshall

Joe Shaw returns as an intergalactic space traveler in Posteagenesis. The supernatural warrior is bounced through space and time and finds himself in service to the inhabitants of new and old Earth. For new Earth, Joe travels to far off galaxies with the mission of making contact with the various races that the aliens reached out to before mankind destroyed them. It is a goodwill mission in which Joe seeks to open lines of communication and to teach members of the various races new technology that humans have developed during their transition from old Earth to the new, multiplanet Earth.

After several encounters with strange and unusual creatures, Joe finds himself trapped by the remaining aliens who were not disposed of during mankind’s battle with the aggressive combatants. His decision to destroy the remaining aliens sends him flying into yet another time period. This time the warrior-explorer ends up in the United States during the twenty-third century. For the first time since his childhood, Joe puts down roots in the Los Angeles area. There he builds a successful corporation, marries, and becomes a father.

When a freak accident takes the life of Joe and his wife, Jean, their son, John, learns that he has inherited his father’s supernatural gifts, which Duke, the robot Joe created, teaches him to control. Once John is able to accept his father’s truths, he embarks on his own mission to travel unexplored galaxies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brighton Publishing LLC
• Release date: Jun 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781621833659

John Russell Marshall

I was born in Los Angeles into a happy middle class family, with two older sisters and a younger brother. We all learned to read at early an age because our mother was an elementary school teacher before she married, and we were introduced to the “Wonderful World of Words.” I was an avid reader and spent much of my free time on the bench in front of the bookcases in our front hallway. I spent 2 years in the U.S. Army just after the Korean Conflict. Shortly after I got home from Korea I met and married the most beautiful girl in the world; Bonnie Jean, who has stuck by me all these years and who gave me three gorgeous, intelligent daughters. I joined the Culver City Police Department and retired after twenty years of service. For the next twelve years I worked at various security jobs and finished my working career with five years as Security Manager for the Los Angeles Mission on “skid row” in downtown L.A. until I retired completely from work in June of 1995. One of the books I read the most, being raised in a Christian family, was The Bible and I was fascinated by Old Testament history; primarily the first chapters of the book of Genesis. I had many questions which my parents and teachers were unable to answer to my satisfaction, so I began a study of ancient Biblical and secular history in an attempt to resolve these questions. Some of the ideas which particularly intrigued me were the possibilities of “Pre-Adamic Man” and the alleged “gap” between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. Out of these studies came the idea for part one of Exogenesis and all I had to do was fill in the middle. Real work on the book didn’t start until after I retired from the Police Department and it was set aside many times for many reasons; mostly work, school and raising a family, and was only taken up again seriously after we moved to Prescott, Arizona, in 2005. Several medical setbacks gave me a lot of spare time while recuperating, and the book was finally completed in 2014.

Book preview

Prologue

The war with the aliens was ancient history and only briefly mentioned in the academic community as something that was better off being totally forgotten, and mankind had resumed the task of slowly but surely consuming themselves into extinction.

After completely decimating his original home planet, Earth, and then turning his next planetary dwelling place into a ball of rock and dirt covered in rust, he had moved on in his all-consuming quest for space to live and propagate and die.

Now mankind covered three planets in a solar system halfway across the Milky Way, which was not unlike their ancient home. Having matured slightly, mankind now lived mainly on the most earth-like of the three planets and used the other two for agriculture, livestock, and industry.

More than three thousand years had passed since the aliens had been defeated, and only a few relics remained of that awful conflict. Mankind finally took up the task of eliminating those things that reminded them of that unhappy time in history.

But having learned a graphic lesson from the alien invasion, mankind kept a large fleet of warships in a combat-ready state on their new home’s moon and a large sphere of detection satellites were in place at the periphery of their solar system to warn of any approaching vessels. An elite corps of men and women were in constant training to man those ships should the need arise.

There was also a force of ships around the aliens’ home planet in the unlikely case that a straggler might appear. The crews were rotated regularly and the ship’s stocks were replenished by shuttle craft from New Earth.

Apparently, the aliens (mankind had not been able to establish a name for them, so they remained just aliens) had not encountered another race with the technology and tenacity of mankind, and they had drawn most of their ships from other areas of exploration to help in the battle with mankind and all were thought to have eventually been destroyed.

Most of the weapons and other implements of war were simply sent into space to fall into the new sun and to be consumed, but the captured alien ship was another problem. The scientists had stripped all of its weapons and collected all the technical information they could from the ship’s data banks, but when they had connected a volunteer to the mind machine, he went into a coma. When he awoke several days later, his mind was gone.

They did not try that again.

They had no idea what might result if the ship was detonated with a nuclear implosion in the vicinity of the sun, so it was towed far into space, completely outside the flat disk of the Milky Way, and a small but powerful thermonuclear device was planted on board with a remote detonator to give the tow ship ample time to flee the area.

The tow ship released the grapple field and quickly retreated to a safe position well within the galaxy and directly behind a giant star, which, it was assumed, would shield them from any loose radiation. A small drone was left near enough to the alien ship to observe and record what happened and transmit images back to the tow ship.

Then the bomb was detonated.

Visually the result was somewhat less than spectacular, and the implosion merely blacked out the view of a small area of space for a few seconds.

But that seemingly insignificant event ripped a hole in the fabric of space/time, and what there was of Joe Shaw was flung through that hole into normal space completely undetected by the crew of the observing tow ship.

And as instantaneously as he had appeared, he disappeared!

***

Joe’s conscious mind was not yet awake enough to realize his great peril, but his powerful subconscious immediately became fully alert. Joe’s mind reached into the stored memory of a long-dead race, found what it needed, and extended out far beyond his physical body to a nearby solar system and found an earth-like planet with enough oxygen to support life. Before the hard vacuum of outer space could wreak havoc on his physical body, Joe’s mind transported him there.

Janga, Rakh/Mibara, and the others who had joined with Joe for the final battle in an age long forgotten had not survived and were no longer a part of his being, but their powers still remained.

This was not the Joe Shaw who had grown up in twentieth-century America, or the Joe Shaw who had conquered Harl in battle, or the Joe Shaw who had been captured by the aliens thousands of years before; this was the new Joe Shaw, with all the physical and mental powers of all his ancestors and all the information from the alien ship’s data banks merged into one human—yet more than human—being.

This was J’Osha!

Part One

Chapter One

Joe sat in the dirt naked, cold, confused, and shaken both emotionally and physically from being thrown through space to the surface of the small planet. He looked around him and saw that he was sitting next to a stream in a small meadow with woods nearby and forested hills in the distance.

The trees and other foliage didn’t look at all familiar, and the vegetation was more of a bluish color than the green of Earth. Obviously, there was oxygen because he was breathing without difficulty, and the sky overhead was definitely blue.

It was either evening or morning, as the sky off to his left was lighter than in the other directions. And whatever the planet had for a sun was below the horizon. The sky was getting slowly darker, and Joe thought back to his growing up in the United States where the sun rose in the east and set in the west, and he arbitrarily set those parameters for that planet and said the sun was setting in the west.

He listened carefully but did not hear any sounds of wildlife, and he did not see any birds or other flying creatures. There were no large animal tracks in the dirt around the stream anywhere near him. He sent out a mental probe but could detect no sentient animal life big enough to pose a threat.

As he was analyzing his surroundings, Joe realized with a shock that his body was different than it was when he was last alive. It was not the body of the older Joe Shaw, who had fought the alien invaders, but the body of the younger Joe Shaw, who had lived and ruled in the far ancient past.

Instead of being in his mid-fifties, Joe was now somewhere in his late thirties. His hair was shoulder length and unkempt, instead of the neat crew cut he had worn in the later era, and he had a short beard. In place of the trimmed-down leaner body of his fifties, he now had the heavier, more muscular body of the ancient times.

Joe stood up and stretched and realized that he felt much lighter than his two hundred seventy five pounds, so the planet he was on had to be much smaller than those he was used to because the gravity was obviously lighter. Other than that, he knew absolutely nothing about his new home.

As his memories came trickling back, he recalled the battle with the forces of evil and wondered what had happened. He tried to send a mental query to his younger self but was met with a complete blank. He searched his mind for any other influences but again found nothing. All the ancient people and the other forces that had joined with him to become J’Osha were gone. He was completely alone, physically and mentally.

He felt he still had the powerful mental abilities of his earlier life, and he also remembered all the information he had taken from the alien data banks. Somehow, his body had regained fifteen to twenty years, and this confused him. How could he have the younger body and the older mentality at the same time?

He spent quite a bit of time thinking about that question without an answer, so he turned his thoughts to his current situation.

Joe reasoned that if there was oxygen in the air, then the water in the creek might be palatable, so he dipped his fingers in the water and wet his lips. With no adverse reaction after a short time, he scooped up a handful and drank. Again, there was no reaction, so he knelt down and drank his full.

It was growing noticeably darker, and Joe guessed that in the middle of a meadow was not the safest place to be at night, so he headed north into the woods. He found a spot covered with a fairly thick blanket of leaves and scooped out a hollow. Fortunately, the ground was soft, and he was able to make a hole with a stick and a flat rock.

It was cool but not cold, but he figured that he needed shelter, so he broke off several small branches from the trees and made a tent-like structure, crawled inside, pulled as many of the leaves over him as he could, and settled in. Joe spent quite a bit of time awake, listening for unfriendly sounds and eventually dropped off into a restless sleep.

***

It was full light when he awoke. Joe crawled from the shelter and stretched his aching muscles.

Clothes are going to be a problem, he thought, but he needed tools and possibly weapons. He found a fairly small but straight branch on one of the trees and broke it off without too much difficulty.

After scrounging through the leaves for a while, Joe found a rough stone and used it to sharpen one end of the branch and to round off the other end. Now he had a small spear about four-feet long and an inch in diameter. It wasn’t much of an arsenal, but it was a beginning.

Now he needed a knife. He recalled history lessons and having watched episodes of National Geographic on TV in which early man made tools by breaking and chipping stones. There were stones of many types in the woods, and Joe collected a variety of them and then set about trying to make tools.

After many failures and a very sore thumb, he was able to split a stone, split it again, and chip it until he had a flat round piece of stone about five inches in diameter with one very sharp edge.

It was during this activity that he had a thought that brought a wry smile to his face. Here I am, he thought, probably the smartest guy in the universe, sitting naked in the dirt and banging rocks together.

Then the thought came to him that he just might be the only guy in that universe. That gave him some pause, because he wasn’t even sure he was in the same universe as before or whether he had traveled in time to another era altogether. Things looked similar, but there were enough differences to put questions in his head. Where am I, and when am I?

As the excitement of making tools ebbed, Joe realized that his stomach was growling from lack of food. He had no idea when he had eaten last, or when he would eat again, but he had to do something to get some food or all would be lost.

He wandered around the area and found several bushes with small berries where the berries had been eaten from the lower parts of the bushes but not from the tops. He guessed that small animals were eating the lower berries, which they could reach. Joe picked one that resembled a blueberry and nibbled it. There was no bad reaction, so he ate a few more and waited. When there was still no reaction, he picked and ate a few handfuls. But he needed more than berries to subsist.

He reached out a mental probe and found several small animals nearby that he could easily control, but he was reluctant to eat small animals raw, so he set out on the next great adventure: fire!

Again, going back to history lessons and National Geographic, Joe remembered how early man had spun a small stick in a hole in a larger stick to make a spark and start a fire. He found some dried sticks under the leaves and cut them to size with his new knife. He cleared an area about four feet in diameter in an opening in the trees, dug a shallow pit, and lined the bottom with rocks and began making fire. It took somewhat longer than he anticipated, but before too long, he had a reasonable-sized bonfire burning in the pit.

He felt like a little boy who had just hit his first home run and wanted to jump in the air and shout out his manhood!

He mentally called out to the animals, and within a few minutes, he had half a dozen assorted creatures staring at him. He picked a furry one that looked something like a cross between a large rabbit and a small dog and quickly dispatched it with his spear and a mumbled apology to the little guy.

Skinning it was not as easy as he thought it would be, but shortly he had most of the creature on a spit over the fire. He experimentally nibbled a little of the cooked meat and waited to see if there was an unpleasant reaction. Nothing happened, and it actually tasted good so he ate his fill.

He took what was left of the carcass and buried it a good distance from his camp so not to attract anything that he didn’t want to meet. The hide of the animal was about a foot wide and a little longer, and Joe spent some time scraping the fur off with his knife and then stretched it on sticks driven into the ground. He then dug a latrine hole downwind from his camp,

By that time, it was beginning to get dark again, and while Joe had no idea of the length of the day and night, it was obviously much shorter than what he was used to. So instead of turning in for the night, Joe walked to the clearing and watched the stars go by. He could see nothing that passed for a North Star and guessed the pole was above the northern horizon, so he must be somewhere near the planets’ equator.

He gathered more leaves for a mattress and then turned in for the night.

***

When he awoke, it was full daylight and the sun was high in the east and there was still a trace of morning mist in the meadow. Joe reckoned it would take some time to adjust to the different times of day and night.

He spent a good part of the day moving his tent closer to the fire pit and converting it into a lean-to with the open side facing the fire. He cut a small branch from a tree and made a rough spear about five-feet long with a sharp piece of stone for a point. He cut the animal hide into narrow strips and wound them tightly around the end of the spear to keep the stone point in place.

He spent quite a bit of time making an ax from a large stone wedge and a short branch. Eventually, he had a workable tool.

For his own satisfaction, and to keep some semblance of order, he decided to keep track of the days and cut small notches for each day into the bark of a tall tree next to his camp. He arbitrarily planned to cut a larger notch for each seventh day to mark the weeks, if that became necessary.

The sun rose each morning in the east and never got to the zenith, so Joe stuck a straight stick upright in the dirt and every hour or so made a mark at the end of the shadow. By the end of the next day, he knew that the planet was tilted about thirty degrees on its axis, but he had no way of knowing whether it was spring, summer, fall or winter.

By the end of the first week, he had established a fairly comfortable campsite and made a large supply of tools. Food was not a problem, as there seemed to be a large variety of small animals on the planet. He found a pig-like creature with tough skin and used the hide to make a pair of simple moccasins and sewed together a few additional hides to make a pair of shorts. They weren’t very pretty, but they felt better than being naked.

With a secure homesite well established, Joe turned his attention to how he got wherever he was. He sat in his lean-to and cleared his mind of all unnecessary surface thoughts and then tried to concentrate on what had happened. Tracing his activities back to his arrival in the dirt by the creek was a simple task, but when he pushed a little farther, Joe was in the midst of a cosmic battle with the evil forces of another time and space. And he remembered the battles with the aliens and the following events leading up to his traveling back in time to join with the younger Joe.

He returned his attention to the present and gently nudged his memory back to the time when he hit the dirt and carefully pushed past that time. There was a tiny flash of blurred light and a gut wrenching feeling that made him vomit violently in the dirt.

He decided that was enough searching for the time being and vowed not to try it again any time in the near future until he had time to analyze what happened.

The important thing now was just to stay alive.

Over the next few days, Joe collected a sizable stack of firewood and expanded his lean-to. He strengthened the walls and added to the roof, which gave him a much more comfortable living space. He piled the firewood in a semicircle around the fire pit on the side away from the lean-to, partly as a windbreak and partly to direct the heat of the fire toward his bed.

When he was satisfied with the new arrangements, Joe relaxed physically and let his mind reach out across space as far as he could, as he tried to make contact with someone, or something, but to no avail.

There were no intelligent beings in the section of whatever galaxy he was in.

But there were other creatures in the area that he had not detected because he had been searching for intelligent life, and the creatures possessed no real intelligence other than animal instincts, and they were definitely not friendly.

Late one night, Joe was awakened by noises coming from the area where he had buried all the carcasses of the animals he used for food and leather. At first, it sounded somewhat like dogs snarling and growling but then changed into the noises of a vicious dogfight.

He grabbed his spear and waited and listened as the noise continued and then changed into a loud cry of pain and then a whimper and then the sound of an animal, or animals, running away through the woods. He reached out with his mind and found that there were several animals in the woods that he had not detected before, mostly because he had searched only during his waking hours and those creatures were nocturnal and had no intelligence other than basic survival instincts.

When it was light, he took his spear and investigated the spot where he had buried the remains and found that it had been dug up and the remains scattered around. But the other thing he found concerned him the most: the dead body of a large animal, somewhat resembling a cross between a heavy-bodied wolf and a javelina, an ugly thing with teeth almost like a saber-toothed tiger.

Joe gathered all the remains of the animals, including the dead beast, and carried them back to the campsite where he piled them all on the fire and burned everything. In the future, that was to be the way he disposed of all the animal remains. Even though it didn’t smell pretty, it was the safest thing to do. He then filled in the hole where he had previously buried the remains.

The next night, Joe didn’t sleep well with thoughts of the beast running through his mind. When he did fall asleep, he was wakened by sounds of snarling and grunting from the area of the old pit. He grabbed his spear and reached out mentally to the area. He found there were several of the beasts digging where the pit had been, apparently seeking more food.

He was concentrating on the group at the pit when a noise next to the lean-to startled him. Joe turned and saw one of the beasts looking at him from around the side of the lean-to. Almost without thinking, he thrust the spear deep into the chest of the beast, killing it instantly.

Joe then somewhat belatedly remembered that he had supernatural powers and sent out a wave of panic to the rest of the pack, and they fled whimpering into the woods. He built a protective shell of mental fear around the campsite to keep out any unwanted guests and then built up the fire and burned the carcass of the beast.

For several days, even with the protective shell, Joe slept uneasily with images of the beasts haunting his dreams, but they didn’t return. Still, he kept the fire going and had his spear always close at hand.

Over the next few weeks, he mastered the art of making tools, drying animal skins, and sewing them together for clothing with needles he made from the bones of the animals he killed for food. Joe began to feel like Robinson Crusoe.

He had comfortable shorts, calf-length boots, a jacket for the cool evenings, and a fur blanket for warmth instead of just a pile of leaves. There was no way meat would keep more than a day, so he had to hunt regularly to keep a supply of food at hand. He also found some roots that some of the animals ate. He used them to supplement the meat. They were edible, if not all that tasty. And there was a plentiful supply of assorted berries.

***

The crew of the tow ship recalled the drone and headed back to their base while going over the recordings from the drone. They saw just the momentary blackening of space and were about to give up looking after slowing the recording down to almost its slowest speed when one of the men spotted a flicker of a white dot in the middle of the black area. What’s that? he exclaimed. They backed it up, slowed it down even more, stopped it, and then examined the white dot at the highest resolution possible. What they saw had them wondering if they all had gone mad.

What they saw was the heavily muscled naked figure of a human male in open space for an almost immeasurably small moment in time. Then as they examined it further, they saw the figure become a white streak that flew past the drone almost at light speed toward the galaxy.

Their problem, they surmised, was who to tell and exactly what to tell them. The biggest factor in their favor was the recording from the drone, which obviously showed a human being in space for an infinitesimally small period of time. The ship’s computer was able to track the path of the white streak to a small solar system on the outer reaches of one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way but could not pinpoint the exact spot where it wound up.

Being reasonable men, they decided to simply report the incident to their superiors and let them handle it. Naturally, their superiors were as befuddled as they were, and after a long detailed study of the drone’s recordings, they set them aside for future study.

Several days later—exactly how many doesn’t matter, as the length of the day on man’s new home planet and on Joe’s planet differed so greatly as to defy comparison, suffice it to say that it was ten days by the old Earth calendar—a planetologist and a historian overheard a conversation about the strange event following the explosion of the alien ship, and their curiosity was aroused.

They obtained copies